Jerry John Rawlings

President of Ghana (1993-2001)

• Born: June 22, 1947
• Birthplace: Accra, Volta Region, Gold Coast (now in Ghana)

Rawlings was the dominant factor in Ghanian politics for more than twenty years, virtually dismantling the conventional political establishment to uplift the lower classes. Misfortune dogged the final years of the Rawlings administration, however, as a combination of drought, falling cocoa prices, and rising inflation adversely affected the economy.

Early Life

Jerry John Rawlings, whose original name was Jeremiah Rawlings John, was born to James Ramsay John, a Scottish pharmacist resident in Accra, Ghana, and an Ewe woman named Victoria Agbotui. His parents were in a secretive and long-term biracial liaison. His father, who already was married, never acknowledged paternity, and so Rawlings was reared entirely by his mother, who proved to be a strict disciplinarian. She sent him to Achimota School to study for a medical career.

It was while a student at Achimota that Rawlings first evinced characteristics that would serve him well in the political arena: an easy and affable personal style, an ability to interact with people, physical attractiveness, and an acute, even combative, sympathy for the underdog. His diplomatic and ingratiating personality was at odds with his mother’s more direct and strident style, and after leaving school he rebelled and went against her wishes by enlisting in the military in 1967. Anxious to fulfill his childhood dream of flying airplanes, he chose service in the air force, securing a pilot’s license in 1969. He ultimately was promoted to flight officer (1971) and flight lieutenant (1978). In January of 1977 he married Nana Konadu Agyeman, who was from an urban middle-class family living in Kumasi. The couple would have three daughters and a son.

Life’s Work

From the date of its independence in 1957 and through 1979, Ghana had endured its share of military coups and changes in government. In 1966 the legendary first president Kwame Nkrumah had been overthrown and succeeded by a series of short-lived military regimes, including those of Joseph Arthur Ankrah (1966–69), Akwasi Afrifa (1969–70), Nii Amaa Ollennu (1970), Edward Akufo-Addo (1970–72), Ignatius Acheampong (1972–78), and F. W. Akuffo (1978–79). All these regimes had failed to grapple with issues of the economy and with internal corruption.

Rawlings became the leader among a group of aggressive young officers who sought to cleanse the government of graft and dishonesty. Accordingly, he organized a coup against the dictatorship of General Akuffo on May 15, 1979, but the coup failed, and he was imprisoned and condemned to death for sedition. On June 4, however, a junta of sympathetic fellow officers, who styled themselves the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), overthrew Akuffo, released Rawlings, and installed him as council chair (in effect, head of state). Proclaiming war against corruption in government and the beginning of a new social order, Rawlings began to amass a strong and unique popular following as a dynamic speaker and radical reformer. His first, short-lived tenure at the helm, however, was marred by controversy that continued into the twenty-first century.

Former high officials were mysteriously assassinated, and eight military leaders were sentenced to death by firing squad and shot on July 16, among them former heads of state Akuffo, Acheampong, and Afrifa. The precise nature of Rawlings’s personal involvement remained a subject of intense debate. His supporters asserted that he was compelled to acquiesce to more extreme colleagues of the junta, but his detractors insisted that he methodically planned and authorized the executions. On September 24 the AFRC handed power to a civilian regime led by Hilla Limann, the head of the People’s National Party (PNP). Limann assumed office as president of the Third Republic.

Limann, however, proved unable to turn the economy around quicky; in fact, inflation worsened and allegations of corruption soon resurfaced. Fears that Rawlings might return to power motivated Limann to force Rawlings’s retirement from military service. Rawlings, however, had built a deep network of support and was able to engineer another swift and successful coup on December 31, 1981, the start of a twelve-year period of unbridled personal rule.

From 1981 to 1993, Rawlings governed under the auspices of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC). It first seemed that he would establish a radical leftist regime, but by 1983, with the economy still in shambles, he abandoned socialist experimentation. Several abortive left-wing coup attempts (1982–83) against him failed, actions that might have molded his thinking about the country’s political future.

Instead of a leftist government, Rawlings agreed to implement free market and austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in return for massive foreign aid in the form of loan subsidies. Throughout the rest of the 1980s, the Ghanian economy improved markedly, as inflation fell to double-digit levels; junior-level secondary education was firmly established; both the production and price of cocoa, Ghana’s primary export commodity, rose dramatically; and the average living standard advanced to a higher range than ever before.

However, promised civil rights reform and democratization were slow in coming, and by 1988 a prodemocracy movement led by Adu Boahen was taking shape. In 1990 this movement for freedom and justice openly agitated for a constitutional, multiparty system. Rawlings was compelled to convene a commission to establish a constitution for what became the Fourth Republic in 1993. Censorship was somewhat eased, and the nation saw multiparty elections in 1992. Rawlings’s new party, the NDC (National Democratic Congress), won 58 percent of the vote, while Boahen’s New Patriotic Party garnered 30 percent of the vote.

Rawlings, as first president of the Fourth Republic beginning in 1993, was reelected in 1996, as his personal popularity remained high, notwithstanding allegations of electoral fraud and manipulation. Misfortune dogged the final years of the Rawlings administration, however, as a combination of drought, falling cocoa prices, and rising inflation adversely affected the economy. Rawlings was constitutionally prohibited from seeking a third term, and an attempt to have the first lady run for the presidency failed. In the 2000 elections, the NPP candidate, J. A. Kufuor, defeated the NDC nominee, J. E. Atta-Mills, and Rawlings retired from public life after his term expired in early 2001. After leaving office, the former dictator was the focal point of a good deal of controversy and politically centered speculation. He became the envoy to Somalia for the African Union in 2010. In 2013, he received an honorary doctorate from the University for Development Studies, which he helped establish.

Significance

Reviled and praised in equal measure, Rawlings remained, along with Nkrumah, the best-known and most controversial leader in Ghana’s short history as an independent state. His rule undoubtedly was repressive, as his regime faced a catalog of charges for human rights violations. On the other hand, a large number of Ghanians revere him as a heroic figure who virtually dismantled the conventional establishment to uplift the lower classes. Though he sometimes used the rhetoric of Marxist icons such as Fidel Castro, he never wholly subscribed to Marxist ideology. His pragmatic approach allowed Ghana to receive assistance from all sides during the last decade of the Cold War.

Bibliography

"Ghana." Africa Research Bulletin: Political, Social and Cultural Series 48.7 (2011): 18908–909. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.

Gocking, Roger S. The History of Ghana. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2005. Print. The author sees Rawlings in a more favorable light than most as a moderating force who tried to mitigate his faction’s excesses, and who had minimal responsibility for the 1979 executions.

"Jerry John Rawlings." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition (2013): 1. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.

Meredith, Martin. The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence. New York: Public Affairs, 2005. Print. Rawlings is depicted as the archsurvivor, adept at outmaneuvering his opponents by posing as an agent of reform.

Nugent, Paul. Big Men, Small Boys, and Politics in Ghana: Ideology and the Burden of History, 1982-1994. New York: Pinter, 1995. Print. Rather than focusing on Rawlings’s personality, the author stresses the ideological underpinnings, or lack thereof, of the Rawlings regime.

Osei, Akwasi P. Ghana: Recurrence and Change in a Post Independence African State. New York: Lang, 1999. Print. Favorable view of Rawlings’s administration, placing much of the blame on the Limann government’s spectacular failures.

Opoku, Darko Kwabena. "From Quasi-Revolutionaries to Capitalist Entrepreneurs: How the P/NDC Changed the Face of Ghanaian Entrepreneurship." Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 48.2 (2010): 227–56. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.

Pellow, Deborah, and Naomi Chazan. Ghana: Coping with Uncertainty. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986. Print. Rawlings’s flexibility and unwillingness to be restricted by rigid doctrine is singled out as a decisive factor in his long political survival.

Petchenkine, Youry. Ghana: In Search of Stability, 1957-1992. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993. Print. Good analysis of the coups that were attempted during this time span. Discusses, also, why some succeeded and others failed and how Rawlings triumphed.

Shillington, Kevin. Ghana: The Rawlings Factor. New York: St. Martin’s, 1992. Print. The author treats Rawlings as a unique phenomenon and a complex individual, and attempts to dissect and analyze the influences that shaped his political career.

Yankah, Kojo. The Trials of J. J. Rawlings: Echoes of the Thirty-First December Revolution. Hampton, VA: U.B. & U.S. Communications Systems, 1992. Print. Highly biased in favor of Rawlings, almost to the point of \\hero worship, but nonetheless useful for providing ground-level accounts of what occurred and insights into why he retained much of his popularity.